PRESS RELEASE: China Mobile, in collaboration with Huawei, successfully completed the world’s first deployment of the Beam Tracking Unit (BTU) in Shenzhen, Guangdong.

The evolution from traditional base station antennas to BTU marks a significant innovation in the mobile network industry, signifying that base station components, especially antennas, supporting network intelligence is gradually becoming a reality. This advancement will greatly promote comprehensive development of network autonomy towards level 4 (L4).


Intelligent networks require components that can automatically obtain real-time network status and dynamically adjust for optimization. As the critical “last mile” link connecting networks and users, base station antennas play a crucial role. Their topological relationships with logical cells and antenna engineering parameters (EP) are fundamental inputs for network optimization, with antenna array level adjustments as key outputs. Traditional base station antennas, due to their “dumb” nature, pose several challenges for intelligent networks. First, the complex and difficult-to-verify topological relationships among multi-frequency antennas, with over 50% of global topologies misaligned or incorrectly matched. Second, the challenge of accurately obtaining, verifying, and updating antenna EPs, with more than 56% of sector azimuth angles deviating by over 10°. Third, the limited capability for dynamic beam adjustment, as only downtilts are remotely adjustable, failing to meet the flexible optimization needs across varied scenarios. Relying on manual work, including climbing towers, to address these issues not only results in low efficiency and high error rates, but also lacks real-time responsiveness, significantly hindering the advancement of intelligent networks.

The BTU, jointly released by China Mobile and Huawei, offers three core capabilities:

  • Real-time topology visualization with zero error: Provides minute-level, 100% accurate mapping from logical cells to internal antenna arrays, creating end-to-end visibility and manageability between the BTU, RRU, and BBU.
  • Real-time EP information retrieval with zero deviation: Automatically obtains cell array EP information with 100% accuracy, based on the intelligently mapped topology, providing precise input for network optimization.
  • Real-time multi-dimensional beam adjustment: Dynamically adjusts beam shapes and directions at minute level, responding to user distribution and service demands. This ensures “beam follows people, network follows business” in the short-term, and “high-quality network anytime, anywhere” in the long-term.


Leveraging the three core capabilities of the BTU and the support of new functions in the OMC, traditional base stations can be upgraded to an end-to-end intelligent tracking system. This system detects real-time changes in network traffic and user distribution, and dynamically self-optimizes. During the deployment, continuous hourly network self-optimization was conducted in the pilot area. Post-optimization, the average daily traffic per station increased from 374.4G to 457.2G, with key optimized areas showing gains of over 60%. Network stability in both the deployment area and surrounding sites remained strong, while KPIs related to experience, access, and handover stayed consistent. The successful deployment of the BTU completes the final piece of the puzzle in achieving intrinsic intelligence for wireless networks, enabling refined network operations, ensuring optimal user experience anytime, anywhere, and unlocking additional network traffic.

Andy Sun, President of Huawei’s Antenna Business Unit, remarked: “The evolution from traditional base station antennas to the intelligent BTU is comparable to the transition from internal combustion engine vehicles to autonomous electric vehicles, marking a profound innovation in product design, architecture, software and hardware across all levels. Antennas are evolving from ‘dumb’ devices requiring manual tower adjustments to units with real-time remote capabilities, effectively supporting the advancement of intelligent networks. China Mobile is both the initiator and pioneer of the ‘self-intelligent network’ concept. Huawei will continue to innovate, helping China Mobile reinforce its leadership in intelligent networks and accelerate the progression towards the next stage of L4.”